She was only in hospital to recover from a common holiday bug. But civil servant Kath Murray found herself at the mercy of a serial killer who prowled the ward by night and subjected her to a terrifying poisoning ordeal.

The mother-of-three remains haunted by the memory of the rogue nurse’s ice cold manner and lack of basic humanity.

‘All the other nurses would chat to you and show a caring side – it made being in hospital that little bit easier,’ she said.

Danger: Kathleen Murray, photographed in Stepping Hill hospital by her husband Mike. The spiked saline drip, which Victorino Chua had tampered with two days earlier, is pictured behind her

‘But Chua never said a word to me the whole time. His face was a mask – he might as well have been a robot. There was a sense of emptiness about him.

‘It was really eerie the way he would silently appear at my bedside. It’s chilling now to think what was going through his head.

‘The only thing I’m grateful for is that I didn’t give him any grief – if I’d caused a fuss at all, would I still be here today?’

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Even worse have been the mental problems that have haunted the devoted grandmother and devout Roman Catholic and left her contemplating suicide.

‘I would wake up the night hallucinating that there was a nurse in an old-fashioned outfit holding an enormous syringe pointed at my neck standing at the end of our bed – like something out of a horror film.

Haunted: The mother-of-three, now 57, remains haunted by the memory of the rogue nurse’s ice cold manner and lack of basic humanity

‘I don’t know how my husband put up with it – we had a terrible time. Someone had tried to kill me – that’s a big thing to take in. I couldn’t even say it without crying – why would someone want to kill me?’

Now 57, Mrs Murray was on a package holiday to Greece with her husband Mike in June 2011 when she fell ill with labyrinthitis, an ear infection.

On her return, she was admitted to ward A3 of Stepping Hill Hospital, put on a saline drip to rehydrate her and given intravenous antibiotics.

But on the night of July 7 she suffered two terrifying hypoglycemic episodes – when her blood sugar fell dangerously.

Although he was not covering the ward that night, during a shift two days earlier Chua had contaminated its saline stores with minuscule amounts of insulin.

Now the drip that was meant to be restoring Mrs Murray to health was instead slowly poisoning her as she slept.

‘I woke up soaking wet through and shaking violently, moving all over the bed,’ she told the Daily Mail. ‘I was terrified. I didn’t know what a hypo was at that stage, I’m not diabetic. I just started shouting “Nurse, nurse, what’s happening to me?”.’

A female nurse came over, checked her blood sugar, said it was dangerously low and brought her a cup of glucose solution.

‘It was horrible, she practically had to force it down me,’ Mrs Murray said. ‘I also had a Mars bar by my bed and she virtually rammed that into my mouth.

‘For a long time I marvelled at what that nurse did, I thought she’d saved my life by instinct. I only found out much later that it was because so many patients had been going down with low blood sugar.’

Still suffering: Zubia Aslam, now 27 and by far the youngest of Chua’s victims, was admitted to ward A3 with a severe stomach bug on July 13, 2011 - the day after police were called in to investigate deaths on the ward

Indeed, only the night before, 44-year-old Tracey Arden had died on A3 after a sudden deterioration caused by an insulin overdose.

Mrs Murray dozed off, but awoke again a few hours later in exactly the same state.

‘I was scared by now, I wanted Mike to come and take me home,’ she said. ‘Of course I didn’t know then what was happening, but I thought I was dying.’

With his wife lying in bed and barely able to move, Mr Murray took a photograph which clearly shows the drip connected to her arm which would prove a key piece of evidence.

During the following day, the mysterious drops in blood sugar were not repeated – but the following night, Chua’s shift saw him covering her bay himself.

That evening she had a third suspected attack – although Chua recorded it as a ‘hot flush’ and it didn’t form part of the prosecution case.

Verdicts: Nurse Victorino Chua was found guilty by a jury at Manchester Crown Court of murdering and poisoning hospital patients at Stepping Hill Hospital

However, it would be nearly a week before the continuing spate of hypos – followed by the discovery that an ampoule of saline had been contaminated with insulin – would trigger the police inquiry.

Chua would not become a suspect for a further six months, but Mrs Murray said: ‘It was obvious to me then he had no compassion – he was simply going through the motions.

‘But now I see it was so much worse than that – he had just tried to kill me, just as he had tried to kill so many other patients.’

Mrs Murray was safely discharged the next day. Now both she and her 56-year-old husband – who restores stained glass windows – are furious that warnings signs about Chua’s erratic behaviour and dubious qualifications were not picked up in time to save her and the other victims.

Initially, doctors suggested she may have a rare pancreatic tumour called an insulinoma which can cause similar symptoms in non-diabetic patients. Five months later that Mrs Murray was finally told this alarming diagnosis had been a red herring and that Chua had been responsible.

Murdered: Patients Tracey Arden, 44, and Derek Weaver, 83, were murdered by the nurse after they were given contaminated medication

But after being bedridden and off work for several weeks at their home in the Heaton Chapel area of Stockport, she developed shingles and facial paralysis diagnosed as Bell’s palsy.

In a cruel twist, she was even placed on ward A3 again after going in with an eye complaint. Then in January 2013, Mrs Murray received another bombshell – she had breast cancer. Mrs Murray was later informed by an oncologist that the tumours could have been detected as far back as 2011.

Attempt: Chua was cleared of murdering Arnold Lancaster, 81, who was suffering from cancer, but convicted of attempting to cause him grievous bodily harm with intent by poisoning

‘I was feeling so terrible anyway as a result of being poisoned that I didn’t notice the signs,’ she said. ‘If I hadn’t been given insulin, or if I’d been given a full medicaI after being poisoned, they might have caught the cancer sooner.’ She has yet to be given the all-clear.

Mrs Murray remains furious that Stepping Hill failed to act on concerns about Chua’s mental state and the qualifications he claimed to have secured.

‘How could they let someone like that work in a hospital, as a nurse? There were tell-tale signs that something was wrong from how he was behaving.

‘I’m a living victim and I’ve still only partially recovered. I hope to God that lessons have been learned.’

Seeing Chua give evidence in court, she felt shocked at his cold, emotionless manner. ‘To think that someone could make me feel that weak, then seeing him in court showing no remorse – it was horrible.’

The last victim of Chua’s poisoning spree was admitted after the hunt for the saboteur began, but was still given insulin because hospital bosses failed to realise how much medication he had tampered with. Zubia Aslam, now 27 and by far the youngest of Chua’s victims, was admitted to ward A3 with a severe stomach bug on July 13, 2011 – the day after police were called in.

However, while all stocks of ampoules – small, sealed containers – of saline had immediately been removed from the wards where Chua worked in response to the spate of hypoglaecemic attacks, saline bags remained in circulation.Yesterday she told of the trauma of being poisoned with sufficient insulin to have left her brain damaged if nurses hadn’t been on the look-out for the signs of low blood sugar after the spate of ‘hypos’. Miss Aslam recalled how she woke up ‘sweating, really, really wet, my whole body was wet’.

Anthony Smith (left) was admitted for alcohol detox but deteriorated and became 'unresponsive' when put on a drip. Meanwhile, Doreen Brace, 87, (right) from Buxton, Derbyshire, was given not one but two contaminated saline bags

Beryl Hope, 70 (left) was in hospital with cancer when she was targeted, while Beatrice Humphreys, 84 (right) fell very ill while being treated for minor illnesses and said herself: 'It just came on me while I was on the drip'

William Dickson, 82, a retired journalist (left) was put on a saline drip and his wife Jean said: 'All of a sudden Bill was gone, straight in front of my eyes.' Linda McDonagh, 59 (right) suddenly became unwell and lost consciousness after being given the drip

Joseph Eric McDonald (left) was poisoned while a day patient on the ward while Josephine Walsh, 69 (right) from Stockport, was improving when she was treated with a contaminated flush or drip and fell ill

‘I didn’t think I was going to make it,’ Miss Aslam told BBC 5 Live. ‘When I came around …I had lots of people around me, I didn’t know what was going on, next minute I know my family are there.’

The nurse who connected Miss Aslam to a saline drip to rehydrate her checked the bag for signs of tampering but failed to spot the tiny V-shaped cut where Chua had injected saline, his trial heard. It was so small it could only be detected in a laboratory.

Grant Misell, 41, was left in the sole care of Chua, who, during the night shift, administered a contaminated saline drip

After she was taken ill, the treatment room where medication was kept was belatedly sealed of. Tests on the saline bag given to Miss Aslam found it contained two syringes full of insulin – if it had run its course, she would have suffered irreversible brain damage. Miss Aslam, a former bank clerk from Glasgow and now a mother-of-one who continues to suffer health problems, is taking legal action against the trust which runs Stepping Hill. ‘I’d say I’ve lost faith in the NHS,’ she added. ‘When you’re in hospital you think you are safe.’

Tracey Arden was a working mother-of-two who, at 32, was diagnosed with severe multiple sclerosis which left her blind and unable to speak. She had to move into a care home in Stockport and became a regular patient at Stepping Hill as a result of complications from her illness, where staff remembered she was ‘always smiling’.

Her stay in 2011 was meant to be a routine after she developed pneumonia, and she seemed to be recovering well when her parents, Keith and June, visited her on the afternoon of July 7. But after they got home, ward staff rang to say she was ‘in a bad way’, and despite living just half-an-hour away she had died by the time they got there.

Derek Weaver, 83, was a self-taught electrician who in his youth worked as a projectionist at local cinemas and had later had a successful alarm business.

He and his wife Yvonne had no children. A widower he moved into a care home shortly before being admitted to Stepping Hill with breathlessness. He was poisoned on July 11, 2011, dying ten days later.